


Perchance to Dream

by rileywrites



Category: Robin Hood (2018)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 14:29:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16745755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rileywrites/pseuds/rileywrites
Summary: Robin thought he was hallucinating when he saw the Moor in the hold of the hospital ship.





	Perchance to Dream

It's three months from Syria to home, three feverish, painful months filled with shitty food, disgusting conditions, and dubious medical care.

Robin draws the line at being bled, figuring the arrow did enough of that, thank you.

He's lucky that his thick undershirt did it's job and kept the dirty arrow out of the wound. If not, he would be in even worse straits-- or dead already.

He sleeps fitfully, interrupted by bleary dreams of Marian mixed with nightmares of violence.

Between his rare cogent spells, the hallucinations get scarily real.

"I tried to save him," he says as the Moor from that last city swims into focus. "I tried."

The man (or the vague approximation of the man) shushes him.

"Rest, English. I know."

Robin tries to lift a hand to take his wrist, but he's too tired to move.

"I tried."

"And I thank you for it. Now, quiet, before they find me."

"How're they gonna find a ghost?" Robin asks, eyes slipping shut.

"They won't. Sleep, man. We've a long way to go."

...

Robin doesn't think to ask until they're all the way back at Loxley manor, cleaning the huge cauldron to turn some mealy potatoes and chunks of mutton into dinner.

"Back on the ship... you really were there. I didn't dream it."

"That was me," John agrees. "Though, I cannot believe you remember much from that first month while your body fought off your fever."

"Just pieces. Fragments of dreams and nightmares and... and apparently, you."

John stops straightening things long enough to squeeze Robin's shoulder.

"I could not leave you alone in your pain, not after what you had done for me, fighting for my boy and freeing the others. I could not bear to hear you cry out and go unanswered."

"Thank you, John. Really."

"It is nothing." John goes back to straightening the kitchen with his good hand.

"It's not nothing."

...

Over the next few months, as they get closer to their goal, Robin finds his nightmares ease with exhaustion

They never quite disappear, however.

Some nights, Robin wakes himself with his panic.

Others, that same familiar hand shakes him awake. Robin clutches for John in the darkness, and John holds him close.

"Easy, English. You are in your manor, Marian is safe in the mines, and I am here."

Robin falls asleep with the reassurance of John's pulse beneath his fingertips.

**Author's Note:**

> Please, if you are one of the five (5) other people who has fallen in love with this movie, leave a comment or a tumblr handle. We need to find each other.


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